So what's the "whole problem" then? It's programming for multi-core processors. And static typing. Throw away your Python, Ruby and Groovy books. The dynamic language skills you've learned may still be useful in other settings, who knows. But if dynamic languages are your thing you're on the wrong side of the aisle.

It's Scala! Think about it. You can write your own web server in Scala - after all Tomcat is written in Java. Scala is somewhat readable, but if you know ML you'll feel right at home. As you all know using multi-core processors efficiently is the future. Intel has an 80-core processor! Think! It's Scala all the way.

Java is old and needs replacement anyway. People get excited about dynamic language but they're wrong. Dynamic languages are useless! Useless! You can't even refactor! What's that about?

Anyway, I'm gonna enjoy this conference, do my sessions and on the plane home start to learn Scala. I want to secure my future man!